{"id":38874,"date":"2015-09-11T09:29:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-11T16:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/?p=38874"},"modified":"2015-09-18T10:47:23","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T17:47:23","slug":"nau-scientists-use-genetic-fingerprinting-on-cattle-fever-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/nau-scientists-use-genetic-fingerprinting-on-cattle-fever-research\/","title":{"rendered":"NAU scientists use genetic fingerprinting on cattle fever research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Amidst new outbreaks of a disease that can be fatal to cattle, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded NAU a $490,000 grant for an ongoing research project on <em>Babesia<\/em>, an organism carried by ticks and responsible for cattle fever.<\/p>\n<p><strong>David Wagner, <\/strong>associate director for NAU\u2019s Center for Microbial Genetics and Genomics,<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>said his team has spent the past three years using genetic data to study cattle fever ticks in southern Texas.<\/p>\n<p>The next phase of research will involve\u00a0gathering\u00a0samples from\u00a0Mexico to\u00a0expand knowledge of the ticks\u2019 populations, movements and ability to persist in the environment. Wagner&#8217;s team also will address cattle fever ticks&#8217; growing chemical resistance, which could further challenge management efforts.<\/p>\n<p>Before the USDA\u2019s efforts to eradicate\u00a0cattle fever, it was widespread in southern states, costing the cattle industry annual losses equivalent to more than $3 billion dollars today.\u00a0Following a strong eradication effort during the past century, new outbreaks of Babesia-carrying ticks have created heightened concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Because Mexico has never eradicated cattle fever ticks, the USDA employs tick riders, cowboys on horseback who patrol a quarantine zone along the southern Texas border looking for stray cattle. Through DNA fingerprinting of the ticks, Wagner&#8217;s team found that the region&#8217;s deer carried the same ticks responsible for cattle fever, raising another concern for the way the disease is being managed.<\/p>\n<p>Looking to the future, Wagner has an additional concern: the cattle fever tick\u2019s ability to proliferate and spread into other states. \u201cWe developed a predictive model of suitable habitat for ticks in the U.S. based on predicted climate scenarios,\u201d Wagner said. \u201cWe found that the suitable habitat for these cattle fever ticks will likely increase, creating a much more difficult management task.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"search-results-excerpt-link\" href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/nau-scientists-use-genetic-fingerprinting-on-cattle-fever-research\/\">Amidst new outbreaks of a disease that can be fatal to cattle, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded NAU a $490,000 grant for an ongoing research project on Babesia, an organism carried by ticks and responsible for cattle fever. David Wagner, associate director for NAU\u2019s Center for Microbial Genetics and Genomics,\u00a0said his team has&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":38858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1031,1032,1033,1034],"class_list":["post-38874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics","tag-cattle-fever","tag-dave-wagner","tag-ryan-t-bell","tag-tick-riders"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}